Also by Jackson Pearce
The Doublecross
The Inside Job
For my dad
(he’s the best)
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Ellie’s Very Favorite Tools
Ellie Bell was in her workshop.
Technically, it was a playhouse, because it was the little covered bit on her playset. But this was where Ellie worked, so that made it a workshop, if you asked her. And today, Ellie had a lot of work to do.
Ellie rattled her fingers inside one of the peanut butter jars full of screws and nuts and bolts until she found what she was searching for—two slightly rusty bolts about the size of her dad’s thumbnail. She looked out the window of the workshop. From this high, she could see over the fence and a few backyards over, to where the neighborhood boys were playing soccer. There was Dylan, who had giant feet, and the McClellan twins, who weren’t allowed to eat any junk food (like none), and Toby Michaels. Toby Michaels was the worst. He was the bossiest kid Ellie knew, and she was in Mrs. Funderburk’s third-grade class, so that was really saying something. That morning, when Ellie wanted to play soccer with them, the boys told her, “No, this is a boys’ team.”
(Which was really dumb since it wasn’t a team at all, just a bunch of people in the neighborhood playing soccer, and also Ellie was a really good goalie.)
(And now that she was remembering the whole thing, Ellie was getting mad all over again.)
“Do you have the bolts?” a voice called out from down below. It was the sort of voice you might expect to hear on television, coming out of a cartoon deer or bunny or talking piece of cake.
“Yep!” Ellie called back, and stuck the two bolts between her lips so her hands were free. She ducked out the door, grabbed hold of the fireman’s pole just outside it, and slid down to the ground, sneakers hitting the wood chips with a nice thud-crunch.
“Great! What now?” the talking piece of cake said. Only it wasn’t a talking piece of cake—it was Kit, Ellie’s next-door neighbor, best friend, and future vice president of the engineering company Ellie was going to run one day. (They’d considered being co-presidents, but then Kit decided she really liked being able to call herself VP.) (“VP” stands for “vice president.”)
Ellie and Kit were a lot alike. They even had a lot of the same clothes, and they wore them at the same time whenever they could. Today, they were both wearing skirts—but Ellie’s was fluffy and purple, and Kit’s was smooth and pink. Ellie also had her tool belt strapped snugly around her waist, over her skirt. In it were her most useful tools: a hammer, two screwdrivers, a tape measure, an adjustable wrench, her mini cordless drill (it was an extra-special Christmas present), and—maybe most important of all—a notepad with a little flat pencil. On the back of the notepad she kept a long numbered list of the projects she’d completed. She used the pages inside for sketching brand-new projects.
Ellie reached for the notepad and studied the sketch of today’s project. It was a good one.
If it all went according to her plan—which it sometimes did, but sometimes didn’t (building was tricky that way)—the water balloon launcher would work like a slingshot and throw water balloons way, way, way farther than Ellie and Kit could throw them on their own. To be more specific, it would throw water balloons way, way, way across the yards, right onto the neighborhood boys’ heads.
All the mad that Ellie was feeling over the boys’ not letting Ellie and Kit play soccer whooshed out of her body, and she rubbed her hands together sneakily. The boys were never going to see this coming!
Ellie pulled her hammer from her tool belt and got to work on the launcher. She nailed brooms together and used a garage sale sign to keep the whole thing nice and solid so it wouldn’t tip over when it shot out a balloon.
“Is it time for this?” Kit asked, holding up a funnel and pointing to Ellie’s drawing.
“Yep,” Ellie said. The funnel was Ellie’s dad’s—he used it to change the oil in the car. She figured he would understand why she needed to borrow it. Soaking the neighborhood boys for not letting girls play soccer was a pretty good cause.
Ellie pulled down her safety goggles and lifted her drill. She drilled two little holes in each side of the funnel, near the top. The drill was one of her favorite tools because it was the only electric tool she was allowed to use without her mom and dad watching. She’d written Ellie Bell’s Drill across the side in purple paint pen, then drawn some flowers and some dragons, which had mostly rubbed off by now since she used it so much. A drill was a very good tool to have—she could use it to tighten or loosen or put in screws, to put holes in things, and once she’d even attached a fork to the end of it and used it to mix a milk shake. It had worked really well, but her dad said that wasn’t an appropriate use of a drill (but then he’d whispered that it was a clever idea all the same).
Ellie looped stretchy exercise bands through the funnel, then tied them to the launcher. Then Kit, who had really good handwriting, wrote The Water Empress down one of the broomsticks in fancy swirly letters.
“ ‘Water Empress’?” Ellie asked.
“We can’t just call it a water balloon launcher. It has to have a name—like roller coasters and boats.”
Ellie nodded—this was the sort of thing Kit was always thinking of.
“It’s beautiful,” Ellie said, putting her hands on her hips proudly. She smiled—actually, she smirked—then wiggled her fingers anxiously. “Let’s get the balloons!”
They stomped through the soggy part of the yard to the hose, where they filled up twenty-four water balloons. This took a while, since tying balloons was hard, and they ended up getting their shirts and faces and legs soaked (and also making a lot of gross squeaking sounds with the balloons that made them laugh). By the time they were done, they had little bits of grass stuck to their faces, but not even Kit, who didn’t much like getting dirty, cared. All they could think about was how surprised and wet and probably mad the boys were going to be, and that was a great thing to think about.
Kit climbed up the ladder to the top of the playhouse, then looked through Ellie’s binoculars.
“They’re right there! They’re still playing soccer in Toby’s backyard!” Kit yelled down excitedly.
“All right,” Ellie said, bouncing on her toes. “Do they look like they’re having fun, without girls playing?”
“Yep,” Kit said.
“Do they look dry?”
“I guess Dylan is sort of sweaty, but mostly dry.”
“Not for long!” Ellie shouted, which was really what she’d been waiting to shout the entire time. Then she loaded a big, fat water balloon into the funnel and sat down on the ground. She pulled back hard. So far, so good—the Water Empress felt sturdy!
“Fire!” she shouted, and released the funnel. The balloon shot up into the air, arcing through the sky, whizzing down, and then—
“What happened? Did it get them?” she called up to Kit excitedly.
“No,” Kit said, sounding disappointed. “It landed in Ms. Smith’s yard. It needs to go farther!”
“Farther.” Ellie frowned. She couldn’t really pull it back any harder. But she could aim it better so it went farther out instead of up.
“Hurry! I think they’re about to go inside for Popsicles!” Kit
said urgently.
“Fire!” Ellie yelled, and the balloon soared—but this time, not up, up, up but out, out, out. It whizzed across the top of the fence and—
SPLOOSH.
“That’s it! You got Dylan right in his dumb face! More, more, more!” Kit yelled, her voice squeaky and especially cakelike.
Ellie put another balloon in the launcher, and another and another. Kit slid down the fireman’s pole. She handed Ellie balloons so they could work faster. SPLOOSH! SPLOOSH! SPLOOSH! They laughed and screamed and dropped a few balloons, which exploded on the ground, and they could hear the boys yelling and shouting. They were coming to Ellie’s house! Kit and Ellie grabbed hold of all the extra balloons and raced back up into the workshop. When the boys busted through the gate, the girls threw the balloons down at them.
“We need water balloons! Find their stockpile!” Dylan said right when a water balloon SPLOOSHED on his head. His hair flattened in front of his eyes. Ellie and Kit yowled so hard with laughter their eyes watered.
“They took them all to the playhouse!” Toby shouted.
“It’s a workshop!” Ellie yelled back.
“Get them with the hose!” one of the McClellan boys said, and the other turned the garden hose on—but the blast wasn’t strong enough to reach Ellie and Kit up in the workshop. Ellie and Kit dropped to the sawdusty floor while the hose water rained against the side of the workshop, and they high-fived when they heard the McClellan boys give up.
“That’s for not letting us play soccer with you!” Ellie yelled.
“I didn’t really want to play soccer anyway,” Kit whispered.
“Shhhh,” Ellie answered.
“This is no fair!” Toby shouted. Even his voice sounded soggy. “Where did you get a water balloon launcher?”
Ellie laughed loud enough that the sound filled up the whole workshop. “I built it!”
Then she pulled out her notepad and wrote on the back, Project 61: The Water Empress.
“What happened to the two of you?” Kit’s mom asked, horrified. It was half an hour after the epic water balloon fight, and they were standing in the foyer of Kit’s house. The foyer had lots of pretend flowers, pictures of Kit, and pictures of Kit holding pretend flowers. Kit had suggested they call for a towel rather than tracking water across the hardwoods, which Ellie thought was very considerate of her. Kit’s mother did not seem to recognize this.
“Ellie built a water balloon launcher, and we soaked the boys!” Kit explained excitedly.
“You’re soaked!”
“But not as soaked as they are,” Ellie said. Kit’s mom narrowed her eyes at Ellie. Kit’s mother, like Kit, liked beauty pageants and not getting dirty and ballet class on Tuesdays. Unlike Kit, that was sort of all Kit’s mother liked. Because of that, she tended to think that Ellie was a bad influence on Kit. After all, before Ellie, Kit never came home soaking wet! Before Ellie, Kit didn’t know how to hammer a nail into the side of the china cabinet! Before Ellie, the blender was in one piece!
(This was not 100 percent Ellie’s fault—she didn’t know there was a “don’t take the appliances apart” rule in Kit’s house. Ellie’s parents let her take apart appliances, though ever since she took apart the fancy toaster that made perfect toasted bagels, they wanted her to ask permission first.)
(Also, Ellie was the one who encouraged Kit to join the ballet class on Tuesdays because Ellie really loved going to it, and Kit’s mother never gave Ellie credit for that.)
“Ugh. Here, here, take these. Can’t you two play nice games? What about puzzles? A nice, dry puzzle,” Kit’s mother said, thrusting fancy pink bath towels at both of them.
“I bet I could build a really cool puzzle!” Ellie said, getting excited. She could get some bolts and nuts that fit together, and maybe even make it go up instead of lying flat on a table. She looked at Kit—
“That’s not what I meant.” Kit’s mother jumped in. She then sighed heavily and said, “Why don’t you two just go dry off on the back porch in the sun?”
The girls took their fancy pink bath towels outside, and Kit’s mother brought them glasses of lemonade. They watched lizards run back and forth on a pile of firewood for a long time, then tried catching a few. Ellie was just starting to draft a lizard-catching device when they heard the phone ring inside. Kit’s mother answered it, glanced outside at them, then closed the blinds before she started talking. Obviously, she didn’t want them to hear what she had to say.
Which meant it had to be something really good.
Ellie and Kit ran to the kitchen window and crouched under the flower box hanging there. They could hear Kit’s mother, but her voice was muffled—they couldn’t understand what she was saying.
“Maybe we can sneak the door open just a crack,” Ellie said.
“No way. She sees everything,” Kit answered, looking serious.
“Hmm. Okay. Let’s think,” Ellie said. She looked around at the back patio, then swished her skirt back and forth, thinking, thinking, thinking . . . “I’ve got it!” Ellie said. She ran back to the patio table, drank the rest of her lemonade quickly, then held up the glass. “It’ll make the sound get to our ears better.” She hurried over to the house and put the open part of the glass right up against the outside wall. Then she pressed her ear up to the other end tight-tight-tight so there was no space for the sound to escape.
“Is it working?” Kit asked.
Ellie waited a second . . .
Kit’s mother’s voice rose through the cup, way louder than before—it worked! “The birthday party will start at four o’clock sharp on Saturday, so we want the special present here by then,” she said. Ellie’s eyes widened.
“Hurry! She’s talking about your birthday!” Ellie whispered. Kit’s birthday parties were always amazing. One year her parents hired real acrobats to come do a show in the front yard. Another year they had horses—not ponies, but real horses—come for trail rides. This year Kit was having a birthday tea party, with crumpets and dollops and pastry puffs and other stuff Ellie didn’t know anything about but sounded super fancy.
“Woohoo birthday, birthday, birthday!” Kit said, and dumped her lemonade out. She put her glass up against the wall, just like Ellie had.
“Oh, yes, she’ll be very excited. She already has a name picked out—Miss Penelope,” Kit’s mother said on the other side of the wall.
Ellie’s eyes widened. So did Kit’s. They knew exactly what the present was.
Miss Penelope was Kit’s dog—or, at least, what Kit wanted to name a dog if she got one someday. But Kit was never allowed to have one, since her stepdad and little sister were super allergic to dogs.
“Miss Penelope!” Kit said excitedly.
“Do you really think so?” Ellie asked. “How? Is your family unallergic now?”
“I don’t know!” Kit said. Her face was as pink as her skirt. “Miss Penelope! Finally!”
The problem with listening in on people’s conversations is that if you learn something really cool—like that you’re getting a dog—it’s very hard to stay calm. Kit and Ellie ran around the backyard doing cartwheels and round offs and trying to do walkovers but mostly just falling over and rolling down the hill. They were the sort of excited where it felt impossible to stand still.
“I bet we can use the Water Empress to launch tennis balls for Miss Penelope!” Ellie said, rolling down the hill again. She bounced to her feet. “I mean, if she’s a big enough dog to catch tennis balls.”
“Oh, that’s a great idea!” Kit said, only she said it as she was rolling down the hill to meet Ellie, so her words were tumbley. Ellie understood her anyway, of course, because best friends can do things like that. Kit stood up and neatly dabbed the bits of grass from her lips, then went on. “Though . . . what if she doesn’t like fetch? Can we build something else for her?”
“Of course!” Ellie said, sitting down cross-legged on the ground. Her skirt was all twisted up around her, but she didn’t much care. Kit, h
owever, carefully spread her skirt out before sitting down beside Ellie. “If I’d known you were getting Miss Penelope, I’d have made something for her instead of making you a—” Ellie slapped her hands over her mouth. Kit’s face lit up.
Here’s why: Ellie always built Kit’s birthday present, since it was hard to buy anything good with vacuuming-the-whole-downstairs money. (Everything at the store was so expensive, and vacuuming didn’t pay very well.) When Kit turned seven, Ellie built her a pair of stilts (Project 14). When Kit turned eight, Ellie built her a skateboard (Project 21). Last year, when Kit turned nine, Ellie built her a desk-size stage with real lights on it so Kit could practice for the Little Miss Auburn-Opelika Pageant (which she won—and which was Project 32, Ellie’s biggest one ever at the time).
“What did you build for my present? Tell me!” Kit said, bouncing forward on her knees. “It’s okay if I know. If you find out the week of your birthday, it doesn’t count as ruining the surprise.”
Ellie was almost certain Kit had made up that rule, but Kit was very convincing. Besides, not telling Kit something was hard—Ellie had nearly told her about her present four other times this week and just barely caught herself each time. She took a big breath, then grinned. “Your birthday present is a french-braiding machine! Project sixty, see?” she said, and grabbed her notepad. It was a little soggy from the water balloon fight, so Ellie had to peel the pages apart a bit to show Kit the sketch.
“Ellie! That’s amazing! We have to go see it! Is it done? Is it at your house? It won’t count as giving me the present early so long as you don’t give it to me. We’re just looking at it.” Kit squealed.
Ellie was pretty sure Kit had made up that rule too, but again, Kit was very convincing. “Okay!”
They rushed back over to Ellie’s house and up to her bedroom. Ellie was keeping the french-braiding machine under her pillow—Kit would have found it if it’d been in Ellie’s workshop. Ellie pulled it out with a big sweep of her arm, like a magician. Kit’s eyes went huge and glittery and happy.